Dispatcher saves woman in out-of-control car

"I'm in the car and my brakes aren't working. I'm traveling 70 mph." In this call, Portage County 911 operators help to safety a woman whose car was out of control on highway.

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Cody Smiley, a dispatcher with the Portage County Sheriff's Office, works at his desk Jan. 24. Smiley helped a woman disable her out-of-control car on a call earlier in January.(Photo: Chris Mueller/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)Buy Photo

“My car and my brakes aren’t working,” she told an emergency dispatcher, seemingly on the verge of tears.

Her foot was pressed hard on the brake, but still she struggled to keep her speed below 80 mph. Her car barreled south down Interstate 39 on the north side of Stevens Point.

Cody Smiley wasn’t the first emergency dispatcher on the woman’s call, but he was listening. The dispatch room at the Portage County Sheriff’s Office is small and dispatchers frequently work together, often monitoring each other’s calls.

“I could hear what was going on,” Smiley said. “I had it in the back of my mind that it was a stuck accelerator.”

Smiley got on the call and asked if the woman, who was still speeding out of control on the highway, if she could shift her car into neutral. His advice worked. The woman was finally able to brake effectively and stop her car.

“I knew putting the car in neutral would basically take the engine out of play,” he said.

The woman managed to stop her car — “Take a breath,” Smiley told her before asking for her location — and shut the engine off. The woman quickly got out of her car after she stopped and asked if she could call her husband. The call ended, but not before the woman quickly repeated, “Thank you,” a few times before hanging up.

The call was unique for Smiley, who hasn’t been a dispatcher for long. He started in May after working for years as an assistant manager at — coincidentally — an automotive store in Stevens Point. Smiley was careful about his questions, repeating himself when necessary if he didn’t get a clear answer from the woman, who was understandably upset by the situation. The woman couldn't be reached for comment.

“The big thing is for us to stay calm,” he said. “If we’re a calm voice on the phone, obviously it’s going to calm you down a little bit.”

Smiley was recognized with a life-saving award from the Portage County Sheriff’s Office as a result of the call. But that call was far from the only thing that happened on his shift. Not long after that call, Smiley was giving CPR instructions to someone else calling about an unresponsive person.